Worse than Marawi
The ongoing excavation inside our family compound which used to be the ancestral home of our parents, but for some reason or another it is no longer ours is very painful to bear.
Allow me to express how I and my siblings feel about this tragedy that had befallen us. It cannot be denied that if the same thing had happened to others, we will understand how painful it is to lose an ancestral home wherein our parents lived and died; and where all the children grew up.
As things are, the excavation right adjacent to us, the remaining siblings who had nothing to do with this tragic incident is causing so much sadness seeing the ancestral home demolished and the garden with all the 70-year-old trees and flower garden cut to oblivion. How painful it is to see the excavation day in and day out with backhoes aggressively digging a very deep excavation of about 20 meters now, so deep that everytime it rains, it creates a pool so dangerous to even look at it, let alone the danger it imposes to us.
Several cats in this compound have died, cats that used to run to my late mother’s garden which is no longer there. The cats jumped to what they thought was still a garden but drowned instead in the huge, very deep pool of water, also conducive to breeding mosquitoes.
The noise on two highrise constructions adjacent to us in a residential area is unbearable. We suffer daily bringing back old memories of our parents and the family gone forever. Only the sadists will not empathize with us – my sisters and myself; and the employees with us for decades who are as much affected that this tragedy could have happened.
The site is worse than what happened to Marawi; and I am not exaggerating for in Marawi, for all that transpired, many ancestral homes still stands that can still be repaired and brought back to life. But for what happened to the ancestral home of our parents, constructed over 70 years ago, nothing, absolutely nothing was left but a big, deep hole on the ground; and all the estate properties of our parents inside the house, missing.
Let me quote excerpts of an article that was forwarded to me that evidently came out in a newspaper sometime in February 2019 entitled “QC and Cultural heritage.”
I quote: “The matter of safeguarding our cultural and historical heritage is mandated by national laws, yet the implementation lies in local government units where these icons and structures are physically located.
“Herein lies the dilemma, for while the national government may be steadfast in adhering to the policy of safeguarding the nation’s cultural heritage, LGUs usually take the opposite view due to their desire to hasten economic progress and provide jobs for their constituents.
“Manila and Quezon City, being the heartland of Filipino culture in Luzon, are most vulnerable to this problem poised by the need to strike a balance between modernization and adherence to the National Culture Heritage Act of 2009 or RA 10066. That law prohibits the tearing down of historical structures 50 years or older without the approval of a proper court of law…
“What is apparent is that Quezon City treated the Manuel Quezon edifice and the Tomas Morato ancestral home differently, and can we hear from the cultural conservation cabal led by the Philippine Daily Inquirer who used to hurl vitriol at Mayor Joseph Estrada at the slightest hint of tearing down any old building in Manila?…”
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Sheila Marie L. Suguitan, asawa ni Arnel who has been helping me in my columns since I started writing for “People’s Journal” in 1994 for I write my columns in long hand and Arnel types it into the computer and sends it out to the Editor-in-Chief. Sheila is celebrating her birthday today, Sept. 21; and of course I do remember her kasi inaanak ko siya sa kasal.
Happy Birthday, Sheila!
For comments and suggestions email at mlmorato@yahoo.com
